Niranjani: Perspective on Life, Meditation, Spirituality….

May 22, 2008

Making Love with Life

Filed under: Interesting Blogs, Life — Raj @ 2:03 pm

[Via Ode Magazine]

A warm smile. An unexpected compliment. Moonlit nights. A bear hug.

The smell of burning logs on a cold wintry night, the soft rhythmic sound of wind chimes in my balcony, the rain soaked breeze entering my bedroom window. Seeing a long awaited mail in my inbox, smell of freshly sharpened pencils.

Decorating a perfect Christmas tree and dreaming of Santa Claus. Having a frothy cappuccino with warm, blueberry muffins at my favourite café.

A deeply satisfying kiss!

Go read more….

February 21, 2008

What good we need to do, we have to do in our present life!

Filed under: Interesting Blogs, Life, Spirituality — Raj @ 3:55 pm

A chance encounter over the web and the next thing I knew that Rajesh personally came down to meet me when I was at Accenture way back in 2003. I have cherished that meeting. Ever since I have been a close follower of Emergic and Rajesh’ writing. His blog entry “On Turning 40” is a must read.

He writes:

The day after we had sold IndiaWorld for $115 million in November 1999, my wife, Bhavana, told me: “We are custodians of God’s money. If God has given us money at such an early age, there must be something He has in mind for us. We have to utilise this wealth for the greater good.” These are words which have formed the bedrock of my life since then. Till then, I was an entrepreneur trying to prove that I could, even after repeated failures, be successful at least once. Since then, I have come to believe that what good we need to do, we have to do in our present life - while we still have the physical and mental energies. “

What an amazing spiritual thought process this couple have!.

January 27, 2008

Back…..and then into a hiatus again!

Filed under: Art of Living Related, Interesting Blogs, Travel — Raj @ 5:58 am

Several of you written to ask me as to why I stopped posting. The answer is simple, I don’t write if I don’t feel like it. So the mood for the last few weeks have that been of introspection and not of expression.

I wanted to introduce you all to a new blog by Vikram Hazra - a senior faculty of Art of Living Foundation. If you haven’t heard Vikram sing and watched him play Guitar,  you have missed something! Checkout his blog Footsteps To Freedom

Meanwhile, I am going on a break out from the city to the Hills and to see some wildlife. Catch you later with some pictures next month

August 8, 2007

Unanswerable Questions

Filed under: Interesting Blogs, Questions — Raj @ 1:59 pm

Kent asks a very powerful question:

“Who would you be if you had no roles in life? Would you still be yourself?

I stumbled upon Kent’ blog a few months back and since then have been a regular reader of Kent. Head over to his blog and enrich yourself.

My previous posts related to questions are here, here and here.

June 23, 2007

I got tagged!

Filed under: Interesting Blogs, Misc — Raj @ 5:08 pm

Mike tagged me and even though I am ill (down with a sore throat, viral fever etc.) I had to respond within the eight hour deadline. So here it is in brief, eight random things about me.

1) This is something that not even my friends know about - I chose my own name. Think about this? How many people chose their own name when they are 4? There is a story out here, but that’s for later.

2) I have been learning to play Guitar on and off for the last couple of years…the fingers have started moving a little bit faster between the chords, but I still have a long long way to go.

3) I gave away 3 large containers full of books last year and within a year my library is back to where it was - My wife Meena wouldn’t agree - she thinks it is overflowing and will say that I have shopped with a vengeance since then!

4) I am passionate about Software especially about Project Management, Estimation, and Risk Management. I read voraciously on these topics.

5) I had my own .com business that wounded up much quicker than ice can melt on a heated stove!

6) I like to spend time with my family - Meena and my two kids Tanvi and Sreesh. However much time I spend with them, seems so very little! Thanks Meena and you little ones for the joys that you have brought in my life! And how can I forget my extended family, my mom, brothers , sister, sister-in-laws, brother-in-laws and their little ones and their little ones! Oh well! You know how it is in India - Child marriages and all (just kidding!) Yes I am a Grandfather! Shh…thats a secret!

7) I like driving and more so on highways.

8 ) I can write pages about this, but will keep it succinct. I am so very passionate about Art of Living. I volunteer with the Foundation and am so very grateful to my Master (Sri Sri Ravishankar). It wasn’t overnight that I found a change in myself….the journey over the last seven years has been so very joyful!

I am tagging:

- Archana - a colleague of mine from Chennai. I haven’t met her so far. She is one of the most prolific bloggers within Cognizant (We have an internal blogging system) and has a gem of a blog on Hinduism. I have been asking her to see if she can mirror that out on an external blog.

- The man who made blogging possible within Cognizant is our Chief Knowledge Officer - Sukumar - who also has an external blog. So Sukumar, here you go.

- Anin, an ex-colleague of mine has a wonderful blog titled “My Cloud 9 in the sky”. Anin, you are next.

- I started blogging only after reading Rajesh’ blog. I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Rajesh two years ago. Rajesh writes exclusively on emerging technology and gives us a preview of his personal life once in a while, so not sure if Rajesh would respond to this, but nevertheless.

- Up next is Nimmy, a KM consultant with Wipro and I love her writings because she introspects a lot and writes from the depth of her heart.

- Prakash, also from Wirpo, has a insightful blog on Software Development. I started reading Prakash’ blog very recently. Prakash, you are tagged.

- David needs no introduction. I have been an avid fan of his writings and blog. Anyone who leads a team ought to read his book, “F1rst amongst equals”  David, you are next

and Atanu. I like Atanu’ writings, though I don’t tend to agree on a certain category of writings that he has on his blog, but hey that is his viewpoint. Atanu you are next.

Here are the rules folks:

  1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
  2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
  3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
  4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Series or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes.

Enjoy!

January 30, 2007

Listening

Filed under: Interesting Blogs — Raj @ 5:52 am

Via [Before I forget] an interview with Daniel Goleman at FT

“Listening poorly is the common cold of social intelligence. And it’s being made worse by technology. To have a human moment, you need to be fully present. You have to be away from your laptop, you put down your BlackBerry, you end your daydream and you pay full attention to the person you’re with. It may sound rudimentary, but think about how often we just keep multitasking and half pay attention. You can overcome that by becoming mindful of what is happening.”

December 18, 2005

Guts and Adventure

Filed under: Interesting Blogs — Raj @ 6:58 am

It takes Guts - real Guts to embark on a adventure like this. Cycling thousands of Kilometers on a bi-cycle on Indian highways! ShreeKumar had done this last year on the East coast road and this time it is the West coast. What I really liked about his past adventure was the nice people he had met all his way - I recall the TVS bus driver and the nice folks in Orrisaa! Just goes to shows the real spirit of India.

I had stumbled upon his blog last year and wanted to meet him, but couldn’t really get around to doing that. I do hope that I will get to tea-off (or maybe coffee-off) with him once he is back!

November 24, 2004

Wouldn’t have been possible but for blogs

Filed under: Interesting Blogs — Raj @ 2:14 pm

I am just back after meeting Suhit for lunch. This wouldn’t have been possible ….but for the wonderful world of blogs.

Suhit has been associated with Rajesh and Atanu at  Deeshaa and writes about Rural India and I have been following his posts since last one year or so.

His other upcoming  venture also includes this portal related to the BPO Industry. I think this is a wonderful proposition and Suhit has the first mover advantage with this. If he capitalizes, I think, this should turn out to be the first choice of portal for anyone related to BPO in India.

November 22, 2004

Go read these blogs

Filed under: Interesting Blogs — Raj @ 3:29 pm

Postings over the next few weeks will be fewer. I am traveling to the US for two weeks….and am not sure if I would be
connected all through…..Meanwhile here are a few blogs worth reading.

Nirmala wrote about my blog in a posting last week, same
with Mike. Nirmala, as her blog heading says, writes on diverse areas: Life,
Spirituality, KM, Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Branding &
Advertising, Books, People, Learning, Music, Poetry, Animals, Birds,
Philosophy, Mysticism, Paradoxes, Comics, Change Management, Culture, Travel,
and Cartoons. It resonates!

Mike’s blog is all about his experiences with Yoga and
Pranayam, I landed on Mike’s blog while searching for Art of Living and was
delighted to find pages dedicated to AOL, Guruji, SudershanKriya and Sahaj meditation.
Mike has done enormours research on Art of Living and presented his views wonderfully.

Next time, there is a discussion on Art Of Living and I need to answer stupid questions like Will you
convert me? Will I have to pray to Sri Sri? This is where I am going to point
to and give them Mike’ email id ;-) Mike writes:

I continue to be a practicing Christian, and my Art of Living experience has
strengthened my sense of being grounded and centered in my life.

And lastly Tony Rizzo’ blog featuring his forthcoming
book(?) - Robust Project Design(tm) - All the things that you were never taught
about modeling projects. Start reading in the order of archives for the postings to make sense.

October 7, 2004

Perseverance & the story of Vinod Khosla

Filed under: Interesting Blogs — Raj @ 8:09 pm

How many self-help books you have read talked about perseverance?

– Plenty, right?

Okay, how many stories / anecdotes do you remember that talk about perseverance?

– ??

Here is one you won’t forget in a hurry. [Via Rajesh] Joe Kraus (founder, excite.com) narrates a real life story on Persistence. Don’t miss out the link at the end of part 1 where Joe points to Vinod Khosla’ story.

Let me for a second take you back to Squirrel Inc, by Steve Denning, where Steve talks about narrating stories that transmit values:

· The leader establishes values through actions, particularly actions that deal with adversity.
· Values are transmitted by stories about the actions that have established the values.

Now go back to the story of Vinod Khosla, you see how clearly Vinod demonstrated the value of perseverance in action. It is awesome. If only I can internalize this and demonstrate this in action daily!

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